she told me don't worry no more

A couple of years ago I started growing my hair out.  My friend and magic neighbor Wendy grows her hair out and donates it, and I thought that was a nice idea, so I decided to try it for myself.  Plus I was sick of my shoulder-length bob and thought it would be fun to be able to have ponytails and Willie Nelson braids for a while.  BIG MISTAKE.  It's taking forever and I hate it because it's always in the way and it's hot and messy and it gets everywhere and makes me look like a polygamist.  

So my friends and family have been making fun of me for a long time because I believe in the inevitability of Terminators, but as more and more devices have AI and start communicating with each other and making more and more of our decisions for us, I'm starting to look not so much crazy as prescient, and I want all of you to remember that when the singularity happens.  Feel free to join me in my pessimism corner:  

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html

Now will you listen to me about zombies?  Or do you insist on your benighted scoffing?  Foolish mortal:  

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141031-zombies-parasites-animals-science-halloween/

Did I tell you about how I ate a tomato sandwich, with a tomato from my own garden, on July 3rd this year?  It was delicious and I was incredibly smug about it.  Karma has repaid my smugness in the form of a mystery animal attacking and eating almost all of my tomatoes since then--I can never get to them before the varmint does, and I have had to cut off the bitten section of so many of them.  The bites are too big for a worm and too small for a skunk.  Maybe it's an escaped fighting rooster from across the street, or a guinea fowl.  I'm very cross about it.

Why do zucchini plants stink?  I picked my only zucchini to have survived so far for lunch the other day, and my hands smelled bad for the rest of the afternoon, even after multiple washes.  This is a design flaw.

Last week as part of our reunion with John's family we went to Lagoon, a local amusement park.  Because of heat, noise, crowds, and general theme park suckiness, Lagoon can sometimes feel like one of the worst places on earth you can choose to be.  Somehow we've begun a tradition of going there as part of this reunion.  I don't know how it started, but every year John and I and some of the other parents try to shut it down with ever less tact, and we are just making no progress.  It's a mystery.  But many of the kids are old enough that they can roam the park in packs of their own, and the parents don't have to be with them every waking moment while they ride endlessly on Bulgy the Whale.  So it gets better every year, and our kids do like running around with their cousins.  So I guess Lagoon is an okay place sometimes, with occasional highs and lows.  The high was that some kind soul turned in our car keys which had fallen out of a giant hole in John's pocket.  The low was when I was on the skyride and suddenly there was a splash of some kind of yellow-brown diarrhea on my shin, I can only assume/hope from a bird.

This has been a pretty negative post, full of complaints about hair and bad smells and bugs and humanity's doom, so I will leave you with a positive image:

his tail lashing, he'll be smashing every shop in town

Hello, I've been busy, but not with anything terribly interesting.  I do have a newly-formed opinion I'd like to share with you.  It may be a bit divisive, and I would just ask that you respect my beliefs.  

Here we go:  you know those cheap little washcloths you can get in gift shops or the dollar store, and they have like pictures of dinosaurs or cartoon characters or whatnot on them?  Lots of times they're smooshed into an egg- or disc-shaped package?  I love those things, and let me tell you why:  their substandard terry cloth looping makes them very nubbly, and they are great for exfoliating.  I have found that the nicer/more expensive a washcloth is, the thicker the pile is, and the worse job it does at actually washing my face.  There, disagree with me if you want, but I'm the voice of reason and truth.  

A couple of weeks ago Emmett had an orthodontist appointment, and he spent some time in the waiting room reading the magazines.  We were driving home and suddenly he burst out, "Sports Illustrated is sexist!"  I said, "True, but why are you saying this?"  "The USA women's team just won the world cup, Carli Lloyd had a hat trick in the first sixteen minutes of the game--she herself scored more goals than Japan had allowed in all the other games, and they gave them like five pages!  And Serena Williams just won Wimbledon for the sixth time, and they barely mentioned it, and the rest of the magazine was about football's off season!  Nobody cares!"  He was so exercised about it, and brothers and sisters, can you imagine how my heart swelled with parental pride?  It was a beautiful moment.